Kaiju no Kami Reviews - Denshi Sentai Denziman (1980) Series

[Dr Kain]

Due to Battle Fever J's success, Marvel and Toei teamed up once again for a second installment in the Super Sentai franchise, Denshi Sentai Denziman. Denziman featured a lot of firsts for the series such the first transforming mecha, the first time the rangers called themselves by color in English, visors on the helmets, utilizing technology from alien races, among other things.

 

[Captain Shark]

Solid review! And oh boy I look forward to your Sun Vulcan review, lotso problems in that one despite it being the oldest sentai to get subs for ages and supposedly being one of Hideki Anno's favorite tokusatsu along with Kamen Rider 71 and Return of Ultraman (so Eva and Gunbuster refs are warranted).

 

[Dr Kain]

Solid review! And oh boy I look forward to your Sun Vulcan review, lotso problems in that one despite it being the oldest sentai to get subs for ages and supposedly being one of Hideki Anno's favorite tokusatsu along with Kamen Rider 71 and Return of Ultraman (so Eva and Gunbuster refs are warranted).

Yeah, I'm 30 episodes into Sun Vulcan and I can tell you it is only half as good as Denziman was. The first red ranger was almost as bad as the first Miss America. The villains also leave a lot to be desired and I expected more from the show being a direct sequel to Denzi, but so far, Hedorian is the only connection. Take her out, or change her name, and you would never know it was in the same universe.

BTW, I'm also not finding Return of Ultraman to be all that mind blowing either right now. I just watched the ep where Seven appears for like 20 whole seconds just to give Jack a new toy that copies his chopping up monsters ability and that's it.

 

[Captain Shark]

Sorry you're not enjoying Return of Ultraman, doc. It was my favorite of the showa timeline Ultra shows and makes up my top three 70s toku with Skyrider and Inazuman Flash (subs never sadly). Return is less sci-fi and more mystery, definitely a high focus on the psychedelic stuff especially after Muruchi's appearance in episode 33. And since you actually gave it a chance I'll give you something nice, here's Ai-kun from Macross Frontier as Eleking.

 

[Toku Prime]

Interesting; There's a couple of episodes in Sun Vulcan that I always assumed were referencing something from this show, but it sounds like they were following up from the movie rather than the show itself?

Having only seen the first episode of this, I can confirm that opening theme is a massive earworm. I watched that episode over Christmas, and still caught myself humming it randomly the other day.

Good to know that this one is pretty solid. I'm going to watch something more modern first, but when I get back to old school Sentai I think Denjiman might be the next one I check out.

The creme egg jingle was a very good gag. ?

 

[Dr Kain]

Interesting; There's a couple of episodes in Sun Vulcan that I always assumed were referencing something form this show, but it sound like they were following up from the movie rather than the show itself?

For the most part, yeah. I recently came across a 2 parter that had a pair of sisters who are descendants of Denzi, but all they did was show the same scene of Princess Denzi on her ship four times over between both episodes.

Also, the villains are dumbed down to what they were in Denzi. Hell Saturn is actually more Kylo Ren than Darth Vader and they've gone from Hedorian killing women for being pretty in Denzi to Hedorian just cut the clothing up on people who wear the same brand as she does in Sun. Fortunately, Soga still looks like she is having a blast in the role.

The creme egg jingle was a very good gag. ?

lmao Thanks.

 

[Captain Shark]

Also, the villains are dumbed down to what they were in Denzi.

Black Magma is exceptionally stupid even by tokusatsu standards to the point where I actively use them as a yard stick to measure dumb moments in toku. "Hey we have this doomsday weaponry that can cause sea-based transportation moot and have the entire Northern Hemisphere kneel before Zod-err I mean us! But lets attack just Japan and not actually conquer territory even though WE'RE STATIONED IN THE FUCKING ARCTIC AND ATTACKING JAPAN MAKES LITERALLY ZERO SENSE". Every other villainous organization has a reason to take over Japan:

-Being stationed here
-Looking for something useful in Japan (usually treasure)
-Vanity/pride/over confidence and the heroes being such a hated enemy that overtook common sense
-Actively attacking lots of targets at once and Japan happens to be the most difficult (see Giant Robo, Shaider, Ohranger, and Ultraman Gaia; I think Red Baron sort of qualifies since the Iron Mask Party came from space?)

Black Magma is ran by fucking machines, meaning emotions should serve no factor, and at no point were they looking for anything as their main goal. And since Black Sun is basically Sentai/Metal Heroes's equivalent to Quetzalcoatl why the Arctic? It's one of those things that adds more stupidity the more you compare it to something. But hey, the last six episodes sort of make up for it. I won't spoil it.

And this is the sentai they put into the Daicon Animations, ugh.

 

[mbozzo]

Denzimen is the second Sentai series made with Marvel. It's a pity that we never got an American version. I would like to see a MCU version of that team, maybe with a guest appearance by War Machine.